As soon as I had graduated from the high school, he packed me off to the Muskegon Commercial Academy.  You are a foreigner, and you will have a difficulty in accepting the reality of this seat of education.  I assure you before I begin that I am wholly serious.  The place really existed, possibly exists to-day:  we were proud of it in the State, as something exceptionally nineteenth century and civilized; and my father, when he saw me to the cars, no doubt considered he was putting me in a straight line for the Presidency and the New Jerusalem.

“Loudon,” said he, “I am now giving you a chance that Julius Caesar could not have given to his son—­a chance to see life as it is, before your own turn comes to start in earnest.  Avoid rash speculation, try to behave like a gentleman; and if you will take my advice, confine yourself to a safe, conservative business in railroads.  Breadstuffs are tempting, but very dangerous; I would not try breadstuffs at your time of life; but you may feel your way a little in other commodities.  Take a pride to keep your books posted, and never throw good money after bad.  There, my dear boy, kiss me good-by; and never forget that you are an only chick, and that your dad watches your career with fond suspense.”

The commercial college was a fine, roomy establishment, pleasantly situate among woods.  The air was healthy, the food excellent, the premium high.  Electric wires connected it (to use the words of the prospectus) with “the various world centres.”  The reading-room was well supplied with “commercial organs.”  The talk was that of Wall Street; and the pupils (from fifty to a hundred lads) were principally engaged in rooking or trying to rook one another for nominal sums in what was called “college paper.”  We had class hours, indeed, in the morning, when we studied German, French, book-keeping, and the like goodly matters; but the bulk of our day and the gist of the education centred in the exchange, where we were taught to gamble in produce and securities.  Since not one of the participants possessed a bushel of wheat or a dollar’s worth of stock, legitimate business was of course impossible from the beginning.  It was cold-drawn gambling, without colour or disguise.  Just that which is the impediment and destruction of all genuine commercial enterprise, just that we were taught with every luxury of stage effect.  Our simulacrum of a market was ruled by the real markets outside, so that we might experience the course and vicissitude of prices.  We must keep books, and our ledgers were overhauled at the month’s end by the principal or his assistants.  To add a spice of verisimilitude, “college paper” (like poker chips) had an actual marketable value.  It was bought for each pupil by anxious parents and guardians at the rate of one cent for the dollar.  The same pupil, when his education was complete, resold, at the same figure, so much as was left him to the college; and even in the midst of his curriculum, a successful operator would sometimes realize a proportion of his holding, and stand a supper on the sly in the neighbouring hamlet.  In short, if there was ever a worse education, it must have been in that academy where Oliver met Charlie Bates.